The PLL Is Adding An Extra Offseason Tournament To The Schedule So Now Lacrosse Can Rule The Entire Year
Icon Sportswire. Getty Images.Everybody knows that once the calendar flips over to the month of May, that's when lacrosse takes over. You have the NCAA tournament throughout May and culminating on Memorial Day Weekend. Then right from there you have the start of the PLL season which takes you through the entire summer. Greatest time of the year, in my very humble opinion.
But we, as humans, will always want more. It's just the way of the world. It's our nature as being. I mean sure, lacrosse has enjoyed the past few years of taking over May through the summer. But we want more. And now the PLL is taking more by adding another tournament to the schedule at some point in the winter.
An offseason tournament which will consist of the top 4 teams in the league playing 9 total games of Sixes. For anyone who doesn't know (If you clicked on this blog because you love lacrosse, you already know. If you clicked on this blog because you outwardly hate lacrosse but we know deep down inside you're very lacrosse-curious, you might not know) Sixes or 6's is a new version of the sport which was designed to get lacrosse into the Olympics hopefully by 2028. Instead of the traditional 9v9 version of field lacrosse or 5v5 version of box lacrosse, this is played 6v6. There's a 30-second shot clock, the field is smaller, quarters are only 8 minutes long, and there are no face-offs after goals.
I know there are a lot of people out there who think that 6's is a bastardized version of the sport, and a lot of me agrees with them. But I also know there are a ton of people out there who currently are not lacrosse fans and would think that 6's is much easier to understand and follow along. Regardless of how you feel about Sixes, the fact of that matter is that more lacrosse is always better than less lacrosse. And if this tournament can get people to stop bitching about it so much, then it will be mission accomplished.
Sidenote: obviously there will be bitching about the fact that most of the best players in the world will be busy playing in the NLL when this tournament takes place. That's a different argument for a different day.
At the end of the day, lacrosse is continuing to grow. Every move might not be a raging success right away but you have to try shit like this in order to get to where we want the game to be. Which is at a point where 90% of the population doesn't just watch their first and only lacrosse game of the year on Memorial Day. This tournament will inject a little buzz into the game in the winter which should hopefully carry over into a little more buzz for the start of the college season in the spring which should add a little more buzz for the PLL season in the summer. We'll let football keep the fall for now, but we're coming for that ass sooner than later.